School holidays are a great time for families to come together and enjoy time with each other. Finding cost-effective ways to entertain the kids can be challenging sometimes. At Link Vision, we’ve come up with a few low-cost ways to keep the kids busy and happy while helping our stores continue their great work in the community supporting people with low and no vision lead more independent lives.
Here are 3 ideas for the school holidays.
1. Build an indoor cubby house
2. Fancy Dress day
3. Arts & crafts
Build an indoor cubby house
Transform a few household goods into a secret, personalized hideaway. Aside from being a whole lot of fun, building a cubby also stimulates creativity and “imaginative play”, a key aspect of childhood development.
Come in to see us and gather your supplies! We have plenty of Manchester, pillows and more to make an amazing cubby!
Grab three or four chairs, a couch or a table to create the structure of the cubby house. Get the blankets, bedsheets, pillows, and/or bean bags as well as some large pegs to can secure your cubby.
Find the perfect spot. Anywhere will do, as long as you have enough room to build your cubby. A big, open space, like the living room is a good choice.
There are a couple of different ways to construct an indoor cubby house.
If using chairs: Put your chairs in a circle with their backs facing inwards. Now drape a couple of bed sheets or blankets over the chairs and secure with pegs or heavy items (like a large book or paperweight) so your cubby doesn’t collapse in the middle.
Alternatively, use a fitted sheet and drape the fitted ends over the backs of the chairs. This creates a stable structure that won’t collapse. Then, use the remaining sheets to drape over the roof to the ground. Make sure there’s a flap at the front for the entrance.
If using a table: Put the table where you want the cubby house to be. Put as many blankets or sheets as you need to cover the whole table so you can’t see inside.
Make your cubby house comfortable.
Place some blankets on the floor to make the space nice and warm. Bring in pillows, bean bags and any other items you think will make the cubby cozy and comfortable.
You could also bring in a mattress and place that on the ground. However, it is recommended that if you decide to bring in a large piece of furniture into your cubby that you build the cubby AROUND the furniture. If you build the exterior first, there’s a good chance that when you are bringing everything inside, the cubby will get knocked down.
Bring in supplies.
Supply your cubby house with snacks, games, reading material, and toys. You can also invite some cubby buddies to join you!
You can also leave the cubby empty (except for maybe a friend!) and instead use your imagination to play. This is your private area so you can be free and creative.
Fancy Dress/Dress Ups
With plenty of different low-cost items in-store, the only limit is the imagination. Come in and pick out a whole range of clothes, shoes, hats, cheap jewellery and other accessories to make their perfect outfit!
Pieces of fabric do not have a ready-made function or represent one type of clothing so they can be absolutely anything your child imagines. Your kids might turn them into clothes, capes, shawls and use them for tents, knight’s banners or magic carpets.
Glasses are also an easy way for kids to define a character or situation. They might be pretending to be a scientist or a movie star. They might be wearing magic X-ray glasses or night vision binoculars. They might be wearing sunglasses on the beach or goggles to protect them from ice glare on the ski mountain. There are so many imaginative play opportunities with this simple prop.
You can also create hand-painted masks, shirts and hats with glitter, buttons or anything else that sparks their imagination. Our stores have heaps of arts & craft supplies especially our Hillcrest op-shop that has just had a massive delivery of arts & craft supplies.. see below for more details.
Arts & Crafts
With our Hillcrest store overflowing with arts & craft supplies from paints, paint brushes, glue, pencils, crayons, canvasses & more. Everything you could want to keep the kids amused, just add some imagination!
Ask instore for our specials and our friendly staff & volunteers will help you put together the essentials at a great price!
Happy holidays from all of us here at Link Vision.
